Wow, Wuk Lamat is really single-handedly ruining the DT story...

[Remiferia]

This might be off topic but I feel that with SE hiding the criticizing of the changes made to DQIII remake has further lowered my confidence in this game getting better...To the point *tinfoil hat* that 8.0 may bring Body Type 1 & 2 and making female races into ugly androgynous blobs, feminizing the male races and lots of gear getting edited to not be "revealing"

And Hrothgar or Viera getting visible head gear? No no! it must go into fixing the "revealing" gear so that twitch cam girls, their simps and tourists wont get upset. (which is funny considering how vulgar those mods can get, a case of "It's okay when *I* do it!" I guess "skimpy" gear is only okay if its client side??)

You've done a very good job quite literally inventing things to get mad about and then proceeding to get mad about them.

Holy fuck, dude.

[DeadlyAlbatross]

I'd rather bet on inconsistent overall production, as the big business decision was probably introducing Wuk Lamat and twisting her to better fit the obnoxious thing we've seen.
The whole trans-audience thing was probably a factor there.

But even so, there are multiple failures so heavy they couldn't have been allowed to happen in a mature writers' cabinet, and I don't think a single person would create this much of a mess.
We have to look at the incongruous scenes, underdeveloped conflicts, Galool Ja Ja being a man-child instead of a reptiloid version of uebermensch...
The rehash of the messages from ShB and the repetitive approach to such messages, lack of any interesting new messages (and the thread that should have been interesting - unifying of multiple cultures with varied degrees of force and guile, reminiscent of Di Zhengshi and Czhenghis Khan, with all of that approach's excesses and victories -- is not examined at all, neither in DT nor in EW's Garlemald)....

[SPOILER] Even Stormblood which I frankly found tedious, incongrous and overall abhorrent, was very, very solid in this regard. Apart from impostor-syndromed Lyse we had collaborationism examined properly, if superficially, we've had a narcissistic woman who'd been pushed into the role and life of a monster and was, to a degree, reformed by the end of her life, the thing about a criminal without memories not being able to properly handle the resentment towards them...

In ShB we've had a whole treatise on the dangers of indolence and hedonism, on people needing their skills to be called upon to actually feel useful and happy. We've had a single man's determination to correct the course of history so strong he actually broke the whole previous lore of the game (and common-sense logic of it all) in half. We've had a certain crippled gunbreaker face a sadistic lifebreaking dilemma of taking an innocent life to be reunited with the one person he loved and lost, and that was almost examined properly. And we've had Ardbert, et al, oh, we've had Ardbert, who single-handedly served as a lynchpin to the whole story and made it work dramatically while being a side character without power to influence events... and that's where we learned what the dead might have felt, had they existed as he did. And good old Emet would simply not have carried it all, were it not for Ardbert and his prior impact on the world.

Of course, both those expansions had their faults and their fair share of crap.
But not nearly on the level of DT. [/spoiler]

I could go on and on. But out of all the things we've seen I can highlight one general feeling -- the tone of DT - indeed, the tone of every single part of DT - is off. Sometimes slightly, sometimes very much so, but always off. So there's now a failed expansion, and we would like to understand what actual conclusions SE have drawn from that.

[Midare]

We have to look at the incongruous scenes, underdeveloped conflicts, Galool Ja Ja being a man-child instead of a reptiloid version of uebermensch....

I agree with some of the things you've said but this confused me.

How was he a man-child? Because he enjoyed measuring his strength against strong opponents? I mean, I get the trope they were going for, and admittedly, it's very much in line with the stereotypical cheap shonen feeling of DT, but I personally didn't think it was that bad. They played his diminished strength due to the head of reason's death well enough and he still seemed rather intimidating (and no, I'm not saying this because he's more than several feet taller than my WoL). Yet he also came off as rather level headed to me when admitting that Poochie wasn't ready for the position. What ruined it for me it's that he somehow thought that by the time we found the gate she was ready for the position when she was just as immature and that, somehow, he was not a good father to Zoraal Ja and we only learn about it when he says it, which was particularly jarring since up until then, he had always seemed like a doting father... but then again, that was also aimed at Ms. Black Hole sue so...

[Althalan]

When you are excited about the Live Letter from the Producer.... but you know you will see Wuk Lamat on MSQ again..................

[Godzillaxpowerrangers]

When you are excited about the Live Letter from the Producer.... but you know you will see Wuk Lamat on MSQ again..................

First quest of 7.1. Talk to Wuk Lamat.

[Carin-Eri]

First quest of 7.1. Talk to Wuk Lamat.

Probably not, if the way 7.0 ended is anything to go by. Far more likely it'll start with some discovery pertaining to the 'key', which is currently with the Scions.

[Nebelheim]

Probably not, if the way 7.0 ended is anything to go by. Far more likely it'll start with some discovery pertaining to the 'key', which is currently with the Scions.

The live letter already showed a screenshot that shows msq for 7.1 will involve wuk lamat in some way. We just don't know how much wuk lamat will be shoved onto us or how long she will be in the patch.

[Daralii]

The live letter already showed a screenshot that shows msq for 7.1 will involve wuk lamat in some way. We just don't know how much wuk lamat will be shoved onto us or how long she will be in the patch.

I'm assuming it'll be like 5.1-5.3 and every patch starts with a group meeting with Wuk and the Scions, even though she isn't relevant to figuring out the hourglass like G'raha was to getting the Scions' souls back to the Source.

[Nebelheim]

I'm assuming it'll be like 5.1-5.3 and every patch starts with a group meeting with Wuk and the Scions, even though she isn't relevant to figuring out the hourglass like G'raha was to getting the Scions' souls back to the Source.

I hope she only appears for the opening scene and not take up the entire patch.

[Sheldinn]

(DT MSQ spoiler warning)

I didn't mind her during the first half of the MSQ story when helping her with the competition. She wasn't my favorite but she was a very neutral "fine". While a little more action would've been nice in the first half, I did enjoy how, lagging behind other competitors in both strength and intelligence, she found other ways to succeed. I did also enjoy the "twist" of having the dawnservant position consist of a vow of resolve and reason.

However, it's after her ascension that I really took issue with her. While the story being split into two halves felt weird, I was happy to no longer be saddled with Wuk Lamat's "growing up" arc. I was excited to explore some of the deeper mysteries of Tural without the baggage. Of course I knew she'd still be involved in the story but I expected her to take a little bit more of a back seat, kind of like Kirle's story had in the first half. Sadly it wasn't meant to be. Almost immediately she's back in the party and back in the limelight.

This time, however, she didn't have any flaws, which were the only thing that made her character in the first half interesting. Now she's the 110% embodiment of stereotypical "power of friendship and understanding" mary sue anime character. I felt like I was watching Naruto Talk no jutsu style storytelling, but without all the big ninja spectacle to compensate. She gave very bland "fence-sitter" vibes with the people from solution 9. Going on about how important it is to understand them, while also being fully devoted towards destroying their way of life. This culminated in the cringe inducing cutscene during the final trial. While I did enjoy the sort of "inevitable" conflict created from two completely incompatible ideas, it didn't have near the impact it could have because it felt like the wuk lamat and the story in general had to make super duper sure we knew how important friendship is and how wuk lamat definitely always gets along with everyone.

The story would've felt much more emotional and impactful if the characters in general had been angrier and more at odds. The moral ambiguity of "it's either them or us" type of survival falls flat when the people we're wiping out essentially give us permission to erase them. Some character being understanding (like Krile's parents for example) would be fine, but it felt weird that there wasn't anyone trying to stop us. While some of that is the fault of the storytelling direction in general, I do think a lot of it is also because there seemed to be this need to hammer home for the hundredth time that Wuk Lamat knows how important it is to understand people.

I feel the same moral lesson couldve been conveyed in a much more engaging way if instead of it being beacon-of-friendship Wuk Lamat's idea, it was instead the denizens of Everkeep and Living Memory forcing us to see their "humanity" and their way of life as a means of trying to convince us or guilt us into not stopping them.